


Echoes

by Anonymous



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Horror, Obscurus, Post FB1 and Pre FB2, cryptid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 14:09:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21209825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: “SilenceAnd a deeper silenceWhen the cricketsHesitate”― Leonard CohenCredence takes a walk in the woods.





	Echoes

_“Silence_

_And a deeper silence_

_When the crickets_

_Hesitate”_

― Leonard Cohen

Living in a city, he’d never appreciated how quiet everything could be. The snow falls on no upturned trash cans, no concrete. Underneath his feet is dirt that has never known the weight of a tire, dirt made of the falling of thousands of layers of leaves, in a forest of trees that have seen centuries. The thought brings to mind the little cakes he’d seen in the shop window of a town several trains back, dozens of impossibly thin pancakes stacked between cream and jam.

He’s so hungry.

He’d thought he’d been hungry before, back when Ma had been in charge of when he ate and slept and stood and sat.

He’d never been hungry enough to steal.

The guilt sits on his back like the weight of the cured ham and bread in his pack. They wouldn’t starve, he reasoned. The glimpses of the family he’d seen through the window… the young girl’s gloves were new, the mother’s earrings gold—he hoped they had enough not to miss this.

If he’s honest, he’s not sure what he’s looking for, except for other wizards, except for what this thing is inside of him.

He still can’t really believe it’s real.

At the moment, the only thing that seems real is the crunch of the snow. It sticks to his boots, thankfully waterproof, and to his hair. It clings to his eyelashes and settles in the folds of his scarf.

It’s not more than a couple hours walk to the next village, he’s been told, but Credence realizes they hadn’t counted the snow weighing him down. He wonders if he needs to find shelter, or if… he’s not sure he even knows how to build one.

He’s imagining how he would do it, whether he could gather enough branches from the forest floor to lash together when he hears it.

Credence stops.

The world is muffled all around him. There’s not even a hint of birdsong, but he still thinks it might be the wind.

He hopes it might be the wind.

Credence stands still, listening intently as the snow begins to pile around him. After a moment, he gives up, begins to walk.

The scream rings out again.

It’s closer now, and he can make it out clearly.

_“Helft mir!"_

Credence whips his head around to face it. He can see nothing but the barren trees.

He starts towards the direction of the sound. The voice is high-pitched, tremblingly scared. _A child,_ he thinks.

“Ich komme!” he calls out. The German he knows is sparse indeed, but the child’s voice is further away, and he feels compelled to make some sort of reply.

There is no response.

He moves as fast as he can, scenarios racing through his mind. Perhaps there’s a lake nearby, and a child has fallen through the ice. Perhaps it’s a wolf, in which case… he supposes he’ll have to fight it.

There are no animals that can kill you where he’s from, unless you count people.

“Ich komme!” he shouts again. His voice barely carries. It’s too wide, too open. It bounces through the trees and is lost.

Again there is no response.

He stops and looks around, but the forest is identical on all sides. _Did it really come from this direction?_ he wonders. Maybe he was mistaken.

“Hello?” he calls, cupping his hands around his mouth. There’s a beat, and then, further away, he hears a scream, wordless and terrified.

He rushes towards it, breath coming in heavy bursts of white fog. The snow is thicker now, almost a haze.

There’s a clump of bushes, just out of his line of sight, the only thing that could possibly be hiding anything. He keeps his eyes on it, desperate for something to guide him.

“Don’t worry!” he cries out. “I’m here!” His voice echoes back to him.

_"I’m here._”

There’s another beat.

_“I’m here."_

He slows his run. The voice comes from behind him, much nearer than he realized. How had he missed it?

He turns.

At first he sees nothing. The trees are harsh lines of black against the snow. And then he sees it.

A deer pokes its head out from behind a tree. He’d mistaken the antlers for branches. Credence flinches, and then relaxes when he sees what it is.

It’s a pure white, almost blending in with the snow. White from tip to tail. Even its eyes are a pure, radiant white.

Radiant, but empty.

The more he looks at it, the more unsure he is that it’s really a deer. Part of the antlers stick straight up, like a goat’s horns. The fur is unusually thick and heavy, but surely deer grow coats to help survive the winter, he reasons.

It takes a step forward, and Credence feels like he catches a glimpse of a very oddly shaped hoof.

_“I’m here.”_

Another person looks through Credence’s eyes. His body is wooden; his body is stone; his body is ice.

He sees the deer’s mouth move, sees the shape of each word. He sees, in the grimace of the _“here”_, the mouth full of jagged teeth.

His mind is as blank as the snow, as blank as the expression in the creature’s large, empty eyes.

“Please,” he says, the words tumbling from his lips. “Please don’t.”

The creature pauses, mid step. He sees that the foot is shaped like a human hand, strangely unfurred, every digit bearing a talon instead of a nail.

He stares, transfixed, as the creature places its foot down, and then looks back up at its face.

_“Please,”_ it says, this time with Credence’s voice. It cocks its head to the side, as if studying him.

Whatever Credence was going to say dies in his throat. The creature crouches, and Credence can’t even turn to run before it springs on him.

The sheer weight of the beast slams him into the forest floor, even cushioned by the snow.

He has no breath. His arms lay limply at his sides as he fights to inhale. Above him, he sees the deer mouth open wide, wider, a deep dark red. The jaw unhinges with a crack.

_Please,_ he thinks. _I’m all alone._

He sees red.

He sees white

He sees black.

When he comes to, he is on his feet. The last wisps of the obscurus pulse around him, warm, comforting. Trembling, he gathers everything into his chest, and the warmth fades.

He looks around at the blood that spatters the snow, eyes widening. Behind him is a twitching, struggling sound. He hates to look.

But he does.

The creature lies in a crumpled heap. Its slender legs are bent at unnatural angles; its side is rent with deep, oozing gashes.

The head opens its mouth, twitching, struggling to form sound.

_“I’m all alone,”_ it says, finally.

And then all is silent.

Credence finds his way back to the path in a daze. The blood pounds in his ears.

He’s warm, warmer than he’s ever been. His heart beats in defiance of the cold.

_I’m alive, I’m alive, _he thinks. He can hardly believe it. Credence walks without looking for a while, following the path where it takes him.

_There is still one monster in this forest,_ he thinks.

_Or maybe there was only ever the one._

**Author's Note:**

> The creature is based on a combination of a couple different beasts. The jackalope and Crokkota, which can imitate human voices, and the icelandic werewolf, which takes the shape of the prey it eats, only in this case, it takes pieces of what it has eaten.


End file.
